Nokia
Nokia Corporation ( , , , ), stylised as NOKIA, is a Finnish multinational communications and information technology company, founded in 1865. Nokia is headquartered in Espoo, Uusimaa, in the greater Helsinki metropolitan area. In 2014, Nokia employed 61,656 people across 120 countries, did business in more than 150 countries and reported annual revenues of around €12.73 billion. Nokia is a public limited company listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. It is the world's 274th-largest company measured by 2013 revenues according to the Fortune Global 500 and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. The company has had various industries in its 151-year history. It was founded as a pulp mill, and now focuses on large-scale telecommunications infrastructures, and technology development and licensing. Nokia is also a major contributor to the mobile telephony industry, having assisted in development of the GSM and LTE standards, and was, for a period, the largest vendor of mobile phones in the world. Nokia's dominance also extended into the smartphone industry through its Symbian platform, but was eventually overshadowed by competitors. Nokia eventually entered into a pact with Microsoft in 2011 to exclusively use Microsoft's Windows Phone platform on future smartphones. Its mobile phone business was eventually bought by Microsoft in an overall deal totaling $7.17 billion. Stephen Elop, Nokia's former CEO, and several other executives joined the new Microsoft Mobile subsidiary of Microsoft as part of the deal, which was completed on 25 April 2014. After the sale of its mobile phone business, Nokia began to focus more extensively on its telecommunications infrastructure business, marked by the divestiture of its Here Maps division, its foray in virtual reality, and the acquisitions of French telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent and digital health maker Withings in 2016, whilst the Nokia name will return to the mobile phone market through HMD Global. History Before 1990 Nokia has a long history, dating back to 1865 when Fredrik Idestam, a mining engineer, created a Pulp mill near the town of Tampere, Finland (then in the Russian Empire). A second pulp mill was created in 1868 near the town of Nokia, itself nearby Tampere. In 1871, Idestam together with friend Leo Mechelin formed a shared company and called it Nokia, after the town of the second pulp mill. For the next 90 years, Nokia on its own would be a forest and power industry company, with activities such as electricity generation. In 1982, Mobira launched the Mobira Senator (Talkman) car phone, which can be considered as Nokia's first mobile phone. At that time, though, Nokia had no interest at all in mobile phones and the executive board considered mobile telephones as "James Bond"-gadgets. It is only due to the Salo, Finland-based Salora-Mobira that the idea was pushed through. In 1987, Finnish Cable Works discontinued production of cables at its Helsinki factory, effectively ending the sub-company. Nokian Tyres (Nokian Renkaat), a tyre producer that was originally formed as a division of Finnish Rubber Works in 1932, split away from Nokia Corporation in 1988. Two years later in 1990, Finnish Rubber Works followed suit. This allowed Nokia Corporation to solely focus on communications. Jorma Ollila became CEO in 1992. 1990–2009 Nokia's first fully portable mobile phone (after the Mobira Senator car phone of 1982) was the Mobira Cityman 900 in 1987. Nokia assisted in the development of the GSM mobile standard in the 1980s, and developed the first GSM network with Siemens (predecessor of Nokia Siemens Network). The world's first GSM call was made by Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri on 1 July 1991 using Nokia equipment, on the 900 MHz band network built by Nokia and operated by Radiolinja. In November 1992 the Nokia 1011 was the first commercially available mobile phone. In 1998 Nokia overtook Motorola and became the best-selling mobile phone brand. Until the new millennium, Nokia had a few remaining industries other than the core mobile phones, such as CRT displays for PCs (until 2000, acquired by ViewSonic), DSL modems, digital and analog set-top boxes, PC equipment and cards, and televisions. Most of these were gradually ended in the 2000s. Nokia's mobile phones were incredibly successful in Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Nokia were also one of the pioneers of mobile gaming, due to the popularity of Snake, which was pre-loaded on many products. The 3310 is one of the company's most well-known products, and is noted today for its toughness. Nokia created the best-selling mobile phone of all time, the Nokia 1100 in 2003. Nokia's first camera phone was the 7650, and its successor 3600/3650 was the first camera phone in the North American market. The company would go on to become a successful camera phone maker: the N93 in 2006 had an advanced camera with a twistable design that could switch between clamshell and a camcorder-like position; the N95 had a high-resolution 5-megapixel flash camera; N82 featured a xenon flash; N8 had a high resolution 12-megapixel sensor; the 808 PureView had a 41-megapixel sensor; the Lumia 920 implemented advanced PureView technologies. Nokia's first imaging patent was filed back in 1994, which they revealed in 2013. In 2003, Nokia had an attempt to break into the portable gaming market by releasing the N-Gage. The device however was a failure, and failed to challenge dominant Nintendo. Nokia's Symbian S60-based high-end phones and smartphones achieved popularity in the mid- to late-2000s. For many years the smartphone platform was leading in Europe and Asia (but lagged behind Windows Mobile, Palm OS and BlackBerry in North America). One notable successful device was the highly advanced N95, another was the metallic E71 in 2008. Angeline Wong had used both Nokia E71 and N81 which has been there since August 2007 all the way until 2009 where it was replaced by Blackberry Curve. Many people like Evita Satrio, Denisya, Cao Si Yuan, Tan Yi, Clara Lim, Michelle Liow and Michelle Lim had used Nokia N-series phones. 2010–2014 In September 2010, it was announced that Stephen Elop would take Nokia's CEO position, replacing Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, and becoming the first non-Finnish director in Nokia's history. On 11 March 2011 Nokia announced that it had paid Elop a $6 million signing bonus, "compensation for lost income from his prior employer," on top of his $1.4 million annual salary. This was a turning point, since Elop has previously been a Microsoft employee with the Business Division. It later became clear that Microsoft was calling the shots at Nokia in order to push forward its Windows Phone offering. By that time competition heated up, and the Symbian platform that Nokia were using was quickly becoming outdated and difficult for developers after the advent of iPhone OS and Android. To counter this, Nokia had started to develop a successor, MeeGo, in 2010. However, in February 2011 scrapped MeeGo and announce what at the moment was called a partnership with Microsoft to use Windows Phone as its primary operating system, and relegate Symbian to a lower position. Although the MeeGo-based N9 was met with a highly positive reception in 2011, Nokia, apparently pressured by Microsoft, had already decided to let MeeGo go and solely focus on its Microsoft partnership. After the announcement of the Microsoft deal, Nokia's market share deteriorated because operators didn't want to purchase Symbian devices when they realized Nokia's focus and attention would be elsewhere. Nokia's first Windows Phone flagship was the Lumia 800, which arrived in November 2011. The falling sales in 2011, which were not being improved too much with the Lumia line in 2012, led to consecutive quarters of huge losses. By mid-2012, with the company's stock price falling below $2, Nokia almost became bankrupt. The Lumia 920 was announced in September 2012, which was seen by the press as the first high-end Windows Phone that could challenge rivals, due to its advanced feature set. Meanwhile, the company was making gains in developing countries with its Asha range. Although Nokia's smartphone market share recovered in 2013, it was still not enough to improve the dire financial situation. The company had already been undergoing huge losses for two years, and in September 2013 announced the sale of its mobile and devices division to Microsoft. The sale was positive for Nokia to stop further disastrous financial figures, and was also good for Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, who wanted Microsoft to produce more hardware and turn it into a 'devices and services' company. The sale was completed in April 2014, with Microsoft Mobile becoming the successor to Nokia's mobile devices division. Meanwhile, Nokia purchased Siemens' stake in the Nokia Siemens Networks joint venture in July 2013 for $2.2 billion, turning it into a wholly owned subsidiary called Nokia Solutions and Networks, until being rebranded as simply Nokia Networks shortly after. During Nokia's difficult period, it was its profitable networking division with Siemens where much of the income came, thus the purchase proved to be positive particularly after the sale of its mobile devices unit. 2014–present After the sale of its mobile devices division, Nokia started to focus on its profitable network equipment division, Nokia Networks. In October 2014, Nokia and China Mobile signed a $970 million framework deal for delivery between 2014 and 2015. On 17 November 2014, Nokia Technologies head Ramzi Haidamus disclosed that the company planned to re-enter the consumer electronics business as an original design manufacturer—licensing in-house hardware designs and technologies to third-party manufacturers. Haidamus stated that the Nokia brand was "valuable" but "is diminishing in value, and that's why it is important that we reverse that trend very quickly, imminently." The next day, Nokia unveiled the N1, an Android tablet manufactured by Foxconn, as its first product following the Microsoft sale. Haidamus emphasized that devices released under these licensing agreements would be held to high standards in production quality, and would "look and feel just like Nokia built it." Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri has stated that the company plans to re-enter the mobile phone business in this manner in 2016, following the expiration of its non-compete clause with Microsoft. According to Robert Morlino, the spokesman of Nokia Technologies, Nokia will most probably follow the brand-licensing model for its revival as the company is not in the position of making and selling mobile phones on its own due to the selling of its mobile phone division to Microsoft. Nokia is taking massive steps for this comeback, evident through its hiring of software experts, testing of new products, and seeking of sales partners. On 14 July 2015, CEO Rajeev Suri confirmed that the company will make a return to the mobile phones market in 2016. On 28 July 2015, Nokia announced OZO, a 360-degrees virtual reality camera, with eight 2K optical image sensors. The division behind the product, Nokia Technologies, said that OZO will be the most advanced VR filmmaking platform. Nokia's press release stated that OZO would be "the first in a planned portfolio of digital media solutions", so more technologic products are expected in the future. The OZO was fully unveiled on 30 November in Los Angeles. The OZO will retail for $60,000 and is designed for professional use. On 14 April 2015, Nokia confirmed that it was in talks with the French telecommunications equipment company Alcatel-Lucent regarding a potential merger. The next day, Nokia officially announced that it had agreed to purchase Alcatel-Lucent for €15.6 billion in an all-stock deal. The acquisition aimed to create a stronger competitor to the rival firms Ericsson and Huawei, whom Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent had surpassed in terms of total combined revenue in 2014. Nokia shareholders hold 66.5% of the new combined company, while Alcatel-Lucent shareholders hold 33.5%. The Bell Labs division will be maintained, but the Alcatel-Lucent brand was to be replaced by Nokia. As of October 2015, following approval of the deal by China's Ministry of Commerce, the merger awaits approval by French regulators. Despite the initial intents of selling the submarine cable division separately, Alcatel-Lucent later declared that it would not sell this strategic business unit separately. CEO Rajeev Suri felt that the purchase would give Nokia a strategic advantage in the development of 5G wireless technologies. The merger closed on 14 January 2016. On 3 August 2015, Nokia announced that it had reached a deal to sell its Here digital maps division to a consortium of BMW, Daimler AG and Volkswagen Group for €2.8 billion. The deal closed on 3 December 2015. On 26 April 2016, Nokia announced its intent to acquire connected health device maker Withings for US$191 million. The company was integrated into a new Digital Health unit of Nokia Technologies. On 18 May 2016, Microsoft announced the sale of the Nokia-branded featurephone division to FIH Mobile, a division of Foxconn, and HMD Global, a new company in Finland. The two will be working together, along with Nokia Technologies, to create Nokia-branded devices. The deal is expected to close in June 2016. Nokia will be providing brand and patent licensing to HMD, and will take a seat on the board of directors of the company, as well as set requirements. Devices are set to be released in 2017. On 8 January 2017, HMD announced their first Android smartphone, Nokia 6. HMD is also expected to launch 6-7 phones by the end year 2017. On February 27, 2017, Nokia announced to relaunch an updated version of the Nokia 3310 model at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Products Newest Nokia phones The newest Nokia phones are made from HMD Global. *Nokia 1 *Nokia 2 *Nokia 3 *Nokia 5 *Nokia 6 *Nokia 6.1 (Nokia 6 2018) *Nokia X6 (2018) *Nokia 7 *Nokia 7 Plus *Nokia 8 *Nokia 8 Sirocco *Nokia 105 (2017) *Nokia 130 (2017) *Nokia 150 *Nokia 3310 (2017) *Nokia 8110 4G *Nokia X6 Microsoft phones *Nokia 105 *Nokia 130 *Nokia 216 *Nokia 222 *Nokia 230 Nokia N-series Nokia Nseries was a multimedia smartphone product family which is engineered and marketed by the Nokia Corporation. The Nseries devices are known to commonly support multiple high-speed wireless technologies, such as 3G, or Wireless LAN. Digital multimedia services, such as music playback, photo/video capture or viewing, gaming or internet services are also supported. It was replaced by the Nokia Lumia line of smartphones. *27 April 2005: Nokia N70, Nokia N90, Nokia N91 *2 November 2005: Nokia N71, Nokia N80, Nokia N92 *25 April 2006: Nokia N72, Nokia N73, Nokia N93 *26 November 2006: Nokia N75, Nokia N95 *8 January 2007: Nokia N76, Nokia N77, Nokia N93i *29 August 2007: Nokia N81 (Daniel Mok started using this phone until August 2009) *14 November 2007: Nokia N82 *2008: Nokia N78, Nokia N96 *End August 2008: Nokia N79, Nokia N85 *2 December 2008: Nokia N97 Nokia E71 The Nokia E71 is a smartphone introduced in May 2008 from the Eseries range with a QWERTY keyboard targeting business users worldwide. It runs on Symbian OS v9.2, with a Series 60 3rd Edition, second generation Feature Pack 1. The Nokia E71 succeeded the Nokia E61/61i models, building on the base design and form factor but enhancing on the feature set. The Nokia E71 was well received and highly popular, often considered to be one of Nokia's finest devices. It was superseded by the Nokia E72 in 2009, and Angeline Wong replaced her phone into Blackberry Curve in December 2009, before absorbing into the first iPhone 3GS user. Nokia Lumia The Nokia Lumia series is a line of smartphones and tablet computers designed and marketed by Nokia. Introduced in November 2011, the line was the result of a long-term partnership between Nokia and Microsoft—as such, all Lumia smartphones run the Windows Phone operating system, aiming to compete against the iPhone and Android-based devices. The Lumia name is derived from the partitive plural form of the word 'lumi', which means 'snow' in the Finnish language. On 3 September 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Nokia's mobile device business, expected to close in early 2014. As part of the deal, Microsoft will acquire rights to the Lumia and Asha brands from Nokia, but will be unable to use the Nokia brand on future devices following the acquisition. The following month, Nokia extended the Lumia brand into tablets with the unveiling of a Windows RT tablet under the brand. Tan Jun Yang had currently using Nokia Lumia 820, but Jolin Ong had used Nokia Lumia until the acquisition in 2015, and she was forced to use iPhone instead.